Yes, the thinking is we have several operators/architects, and should they need to work on a server, part of the change management process should iclude the server being taken out of monitoring for the duration of the work, so that other operators do start escalating a problem that is of our making. For example, we check that all automatic start services are running - if I want to stop the AV service for an install, our ops would see the service fail, and restart it if they hadn't read all the change requests that had come in. We aren't all in the same room or even country
I'd like it to set a Status of 'Maintenance' rather than good,bad,unknown or out of schedule, and suspend alerts till removed from maintenance. An associated comment (like when an alert is acknowledged) would be very useful. I could see it being an additional user right, the ability to put machines into and remove them from this mode.
Sounds like a lot of work to me (but I'm no programmer) but I think its a good feature for large installs.